Designing a better dental products resource for you

Whether it’s bold and in your face demanding of attention or subtle and nested into the environment, design is all around us in our personal and professional lives. It’s intentional, impactful and capable of influencing our physical, mental and emotional lives.

In short, design has a role to play in just about everything. An instrument handle that perfectly fits your hand, a room that just feels right to be in and even a software interface that’s intuitive to navigate through are all the results of thoughtful design.

That’s the thing; whether we put an effort into the design of our lives and practices or just leave things to chance, the shape they take is a form of design. Whether you’re setting up a room in a new house, planning a vacation, restoring a patient’s tooth, or building a brand-new dental practice, paying attention and directing the design leads to a better, more enjoyable result.

Trending article: Break out of your restorative rut

This issue of Dental Products Report looks at the concept of design and tries to unlock the ways dental professionals can design things in their professional lives. We cover the ways physical and digital systems can be used to design restorations,and best practices for building a dental practice as well as the ways software can design a workflow so patients and clinicians move smoothly through every appointment.

Good design is not static. A well-designed space or system grows, adapts and changes to meet new needs. This is true of dental techniques, dental practices and, yes, even dental magazines.

While working on content about design in dental practices, the Dental Products Report team is putting those same principles to work to evolve the publication’s look, feel and focus. Our goal is to create a  better resource to help you discover dental innovations, adopt products that best fit your practice, and succeed clinically and as a business.
Before I share our plans, and the ways you can help, I should probably take a step back and reintroduce myself. I recently took over as the editorial director for Dental Products Report, but I’m by no means new. I’m a journalist by training, and more than a decade ago this publication served as my entrance to the dental industry.

I’ve held editorial leadership roles on several dental publications over the years, and I’m thrilled about this opportunity at the helm of Dental Products Report.

Designing a practice where all the products fit into place like puzzle pieces is a key to success. My aim is to fit all of our content pieces together into that same puzzle, so we can serve as a resource for in-depth information on what’s new, how things work, and how you can make them work for you, your practice and your patients.

If you’re reading this in print, you might have noticed one of these improvements as the magazine looks and feels more substantial. We invested in a heavier paper for both the cover and the inside pages, so we can provide a more robust magazine that is built to better showcase dental products and techniques.

Read more: Why your dental office design matters

Changes also are underway inside the magazine. Articles are being designed with more visual appeal to showcase more quick, accessible, actionable information. The next phase of our efforts includes a more inviting style for the cover and new touches to the article formats we include in every issue.

If we’re going to do this right, we need your help. We recently completed a reader survey to learn what you like and don’t like about Dental Products Report. I want to extend a sincere thank you to everyone who responded to the survey. The results are helping us improve the content you want more of, replace things you don’t find valuable and build new content formats you’ve asked for.

I hope these open lines of communication can become a true strength of Dental Products Report. Last month our ergonomics columnist Dr. Bethany Valachi debuted a Question and Answer format for her monthly column. Ask us questions. Other columnists also are accessible to directly address the real-world situations you and your colleagues face.

But these questions don’t have to stop with our columnists. Our editorial team is here to help you find solutions. Ask us questions you have about dental products, services, systems and running your practice. We’ll do our best to find you answers. We want to showcase innovation but with a healthy skepticism to present what’s new, the best of the tried and true as well as the things that need improvement.

We believe our independent and unbiased coverage will show through, but we need your help to keep us on track. Let us know what’s making the biggest impact on your practices and patients. Tell us when we succeed, but more importantly point out when we miss the mark, fail to dive deep enough, or otherwise fall short. We’ll work to do better.

We’re extremely excited about what’s ahead and look forward to working hand in hand with you as we design the future of Dental Products Report together. Thank you for being a part of this.